Julia Roberts’ quiet year

It was a busy celebrity day in NYC, as Julia Roberts joined Kristen Stewart outside. She’s not promoting anything, though, she’s just Being Famous Outside. It’s been a quiet year for Julia, with no new projects, but she has a new film with Sam Esmail coming in February. It’s called Panic Carefully, and it co-stars Eddie Redmayne and Brian Tyree Henry.

Julia previously worked with Esmail on the Prime Video series Homecoming, and Netflix’s Leave the World Behind, and in the same vein as that film, Panic Carefully is described as a thriller. Sam Esmail really doesn’t make anything but thrillers at this point. I wonder if he’s stressful in real life, or if he’s super chill because he gets all his tension out in his work? Someone ask Emmy Rossum (they’re married). Anyway, the February release date isn’t super encouraging.  

It’s interesting that this is Roberts’ third collaboration with Esmail but the first one in theaters. It speaks to the shift of the last twenty years, in which the playing field between TV and film was neutralized, and Netflix became a major distributor. Once upon a time, Julia Roberts wouldn’t deign to do TV, now she’ll work with the same director several times before getting a movie into theaters with him. Although, I have to say, the work with Esmail is not great. Homecoming is straight up bad, Leave the World Behind is the kind of “folding laundry” mediocrity Netflix has gotten so good at producing. I don’t blame Julia, Sam Esmail is having a really hard time recapturing that Mr. Robot magic.